ESL hosting esports tournament broadcast in VR

The Electronic Sports League is hosting a major tournament that will be broadcast in virtual reality. The tournament comes as part of a partnership between ESL and Sliver.tv, a VR entertainment platform, and will include the popular esports titles League of Legends and Counter Strike: Global Offensive.

The tournament will be streamed live from the Intel Extreme Masters event in Oakland. The VR presentation won’t actually give viewers a perspective from inside the game — as these are not VR games — but rather it will give viewers a 360-degree view of the venue, either from a bird’s eye or first person perspective. But VR viewers will get easy access to things like replays, cutaways, and real time stats over the course of each match, all of which will be fed straight into the VR overlay.

In a press release, ESL’s product manager Stuart Ewen emphasizes that this will be a unique spectator experience, and something that can only be done in VR:

“Sliver.tv is helping us raise the bar for VR live streaming with VRLiveStats. Having a real-time in-depth look at everything that happens in a CS:GO match is something unique to a VR broadcast. Now, viewers not only have a bird’s eye view of all the action and a first person feed, but also all of the statistics to put together a high level view of how a round or match unfolds. All of this is only possible in a VR environment.”

The Intel Extreme Masters tournament takes place on November 19th and 20th. You can watch the tournament in VR through Sliver.tv on either the Oculus Rift, HTC Vive, or Samsung GearVR. Mobile apps are also available on Android and iOS, or they can be obtained directly through the Sliver.tv website.